New Year's Day

To welcome this new year, we headed to Bayfront Park for a leisurely morning walk. I often find that I take our surroundings for granted, forgetting what a beautiful city we live in. One of my goals for this year is to enjoy and embrace where we are now, still hoping that one day (perhaps in the very distant future) we'll have our little farm that I frequently dream about.

Our morning at the park was perfect - the sky was a vibrant shade of blue and the air was crisp. Grace had a great time romping around the life-sized art sculptures, while Sophie sniffed every blade of grass in sight. While there, we made great attempts at taking a decent family photograph, but the one below was the best we could get.




So here's to embracing where we are in life - from where we live, to our careers and every nook and cranny between. Happy 2012, may this be a wonderful year!

December 2011

Since a month has pasted since my past post, I thought I'd share a photo mosaic displaying some of things we've done during December. Enjoy.......


1. Swinging on a vine during our search for a yule log 2. Family holiday breakfast 3. Letter from Santa 4. A visit to the Chapel where Dean and I married 5. The girls on Christmas morning (note that Grace is wearing summer pj's, as it was too warm for her Christmas nightgown) 6. Our tree on Christmas Eve 7. With Grandpa at breakfast 8. Henry, our "Elf on the Shelf" 9. Letter and cookies to Santa 10. Dressed as an elf, ready to deliver holiday gifts 11. Making gingerbread cookies 12. This years advent calendar - Playmobil dinosaurs 13. Our favorite cookie - "cinnamon bun pinwheels" from King Arthur Flour 14. Frozen forest at Lowery Park Zoo 15. Mama-made elf slippers 16. A reindeer sans antlers at the zoo 17. Piano concert 18. Sophie searching for lizards 19. The yule log cake we made for Winter Solstice 20. A button tree made by Grace 21. Sidewalk art 22. Washing the car - the number one thing Grace wanted to do on her vacation 23. Santa Grace 24. Painting gift bags 25. Mad Lib fun during family Christmas dinner 26. Part of the gingerbread scene we made 27. Lost tooth and Santa dollar 28. Grace's holiday story for school 29. Table at our Christmas dinner 30. Piano playing at Meme and Pop's 31. Tie Dye project 32. Christmas dessert 33. Playing her golden harp for family (this was the number one item on Grace's Christmas list) 34. Pouring wine for Pop 35. Christmas stockings 36. Christmas breakfast

Week 47 - Thanksgiving

Just dropping in to share some pictures of things Grace has been working on (both from school and home) to celebrate the holiday. She's had quite the crafting bug, I tell you.



Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Week 45 - Halloween 2011

For Halloween, Grace (after much indecisiveness) decided to be a Flamenco dancer. As in previous years, I found myself making her costume from a sketch that she created, amending the pattern as needed to make the finished dress come as close to her drawing as possible.

Needless to say, she was smitten with the results - spending the night twirling and whirling about, clicking her castanets all the while.





It was a "totally fun" night, spent under the light of a dragon's eye moon!

Week 44 - Spooky Piano Music

Here's Grace (although difficult to see), all dressed-up in her Halloween costume, playing some spooky piano music with added spine-tingling sound effects (not to mention a jingle from Sophie's collar).

Happy haunting!

Week 43 - Adoption Day Happenings

This past weekend we celebrated Grace's adoption day. It always seems as though we head away from home to share this special day with her. But this year we stayed close to home, allowing her to choose the activities she wanted to do most - which happened to be camping in the backyard and finding her way through a corn maze.

In order to fulfill Grace's desire to get lost in a life-sized maze, we headed to Hunsader Farms for their annual Pumpkin Festival. The weather was perfect, making it tolerable to wait in long lines for such things as hayrides and a bag of freshly popped kettle corn. Long lines and crowds aside, we had a great time.






Being lost in a maze of corn, while watching pumpkins being shot from a cannon sounds like a perfect way to celebrate an adoption day don't you think? We certainly do!

Week 40 - A Week in Fall

We've just finished off a pretty productive week around here. Perhaps it had to do with cooler temperatures or the fact that I had five days off in a row from work - regardless, I'll take it. Here's some of what we accomplished....


The fall decorations are up and a few new projects were completed too - like the colorful leaves above.


The cooler weather garden is nearly finished. Grace and I worked each morning and afternoon adding compost, sowing seeds, watering, etc. In the photo above she's sowing the peas around the bamboo trellis we made.


While gardening, Grace became the backyard lizard charmer. Two small lizards have made their home amongst our eggplants and Grace got each of them to climb upon her arm. To say she was excited is an understatement.


Thirty five pounds of apples were made into applesauce. I must say that all the peeling, coring and slicing was worth it - you just can't beat the taste of homemade.


And lastly, there was a fair amount of quilting done. Since I didn't take any pictures while sewing, I thought I'd share a photo of Grace surrounded by pumpkins instead - happy autumn everyone!